“An Introduction” is perhaps the most famous of the poems

written by Kamala das in a self reflective and confessional tone from

her maid publication ‘Summer in Calcutta’. The poem is a strong

remark on patriarchal society prevail today and brings to light the

miseries, bondage, pain suffered by the fairer sex in such times.

The poet says that she is not interested in politics but claims

that she can name all the people who have been in power right from

the time of Nehru. By saying that she can repeat them as fluently as

days of week, name of month. She states that politics in the country

is the game of few chosen elite who ironically rule a democracy. She

describes herself saying that she is an Indian born in Malabar and

very brown in color. She speaks in three languages, writes in two and

dreams in one. Kamala Das echoes that the medium of writing is

not as significant as in the comfort level that one requires. People

asked her not to write in English as it is not her mother tongue.

More over it is a colonial language.

She emphasizes that the language she speaks becomes her own,

all its imperfections and queerness become her own. It is half English,

half Hindi, which seems rather amusing but the point is that it is

honest. It is the language of her expression and emotion as it voices

speech like of trees in storm or the clouds of rain. Neither does it

echoes the “in coherent muttering of the funeral pyre”.

She moves on telling her own story. She was a child, and later

she had grown up for her body started showing the signs of puberty.

But she did not seem to understand the interpretation because at the

heart she was still but a child. When she asked for love from her

soul mate not knowing what else to ask, he took the sixteen year old

to his bedroom. Thought she was not beaten by him, she felt beaten

and her body seemed crushed under her own weight.

She tries to overcome such humiliation by being tomboyish and

thereafter when she opts for male clothing to hide her femininity, the

guardians enforce typical female attire, with warnings to fit in to the

socially determined attribute of a women, to become a wife and a

mother, and get confined to the domestic routine she is threatened to

remain within the four walls of her female space least she should

make herself a psychic or a maniac. They even ask her to hold her

tears when rejected in love. She calls them categorizers since they

tent to categories every person on the basis of points that are purely

whimsical. She explains her encounter with a man. She attributes him
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with not a proper noun, but a common noun “every man” to reflect

his universality. He defined himself by the “I”, the supreme male ego.

The poem “An introduction” is purely subjective and feminist

poem in which she speaks in the voice of a girl. The poetess is a

feminist by all means. At the least a feminist is someone who holds

that women suffers discrimination of their sex and that they have

specific needs which remain negated and unsatisfied and that the

satisfaction of then needs would require a radical change in the social,

economic and political order. An introduction speaks the longing and

complaints of a women representation of all women against man who

represents every man.

“… I met a man, loved him. Call

Him not by any name, he is every man

Who wants a women, just as I am every

Women who seeks love…”(lines 43-46)

The feminists concentrate on the subordination of women two

areas: biological and cultural. Biological contract is sex and cultural

one is gender. They cannot be separated.

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 Kamala das, in her poems An Introduction describes the

biological and psychological need of women which need to be studied

in the cultural frame work of the society.

“I don’t know politics but I know the names

Of those in power, and can repeat them like

Days of week, or name of months, beginning with

Nehru” (lines 1-4)

Here the poetess reveals the ignorance of politics. But she

knows the names of those in power and is capable of repeating them

easily. This assertion has varied interpretation. The most agreed

interpretation is that she dislikes politics because it is completely

dominated by men.

In the following lines she focuses on the mother land and

mother tongue.

“I am Indian, very brown, born in

Malabar, I speak three languages, write

Two dream in one” (lines 4-6)

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 She claims that she is an Indian very brown and born in

Malabar. She can speak three languages, write in two and dream in

one. She asserts her choice to write in English despite social

restrictions. She echoes the views of the linguists that language

conditions consciousness. Perhaps this function of language implies the

poetess to rebel against male dominations and subordinations of

woman in patriarchal society.

She writes about the process of maturity and manifestation of

changes in woman’s body (poem line 23-31). During this period she

longs for love. In a traditional society like in Indian a girl gets

married to a man who is in experienced in the art of love making

and is ignorant about the desires of women. In the first sexual

encounter with her husband she gets irritated and feels that in matters

of sex male dominates. This sense of subordination makes her a rebel.

In lines 33-38(“…I wore t-shirt….be Amy, or be Kamala.”) the

poetess brings out the pictures of the conservation society in which

women are passive and submissive. Women are instructed to put on

sarees; as wife’s they have to perform different roles in their home

under the direction of husband. That is they should adjust themselves

to the surroundings. Even their gestures, postures and ornaments are

don’ts that Indian marries women have to follow. She tells it in lines

40-43(“Don’t play…jilted in love…”).

In the Indian conservative society, women have little freedom in

the matter of sexuality and feminine frivolity and pretention. Here

women are not allowed to express their sexuality freely and frankly.

Fall in love with each other is a natural desire of man and women.

But the way women feels loved is different from the way man feels

loved. This distinction intendancy is due to the difference in psyche.

The hungry haste of rivers refers to impulsive love of male and

patient love of females. The poetess feels that women are superior to

man in the matter of love. That is why she uses ocean in the context

of women and river in the context of man.

She demolishes males the supremacy in the matter of

relationships. She explains it in line 48-52 (“Who are you…in its

sheath”.). ‘Sword in its sheath’ refers to the passivity of male in

matter of sex and love. Kamala das is against sex inhibition and

reservation. In lines 52-58 (“It is I who…the Betrayed”) the poetess

throws light upon the role of women in a permissive society.

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 “I have no joys which are not yours, no

Aches which are not yours.

I too call myself I”. (Lines 58-59)

The above line reflects on a kind of love in which the lovers

lose as well as retain their identity. Here the poetess advocates a kind

of relation between love and beloved which John Donne would say’

two legs of a compass”.

In continuation of the agreements about the strong feminism

seen in the poem An Introduction by Kamala das, I try to go through

another poem of the poetess “The Old Playhouse”. The poem was

publishes in 1973. It is a poem of protest against patriarchy. That is

strong opinion against male dominate Indian society. She expresses the

common expectations of the male dominants society. In such a social

set up a women is expected to play a certain conventional roles, and

her own wishes and aspirations are not taken in to account.

The poem is written with first person point of view that first

person is a woman who gives an account of her unsatisfactory

disappointing conjugal life with her husband. She compares herself a

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swallow and her husband a captor who wanted to tame her and keep

her fully under his control by the power of his love making.

The husband wanted to make her forset all those comforts

which she might have enjoyed in her home before her marriage.

Besides, he wanted her to forget her very nature and her innate love

of freedom by keeping her in a state of subjection to him. The

speaker says that she had come to her husband with a view to

develop her own personality. But all she has had from him are lesson

about him. Her husband, a self centered man, makes love with her

and feels pleasure from her bodily response to his love making. He

approves her mind and mood when he makes love to her and he

feels pleased by the tremors of her body during the sexual union.

He fails to understand that her response during his love making

is purely physical, and so it is superficial as she never experiences

any feeling or oneness with him. The notion of love and affection

mean nothing to her husband, according to the speaker. To him she is

only a play thing a sexual partner and a house wife. During the

sexual union he kisses her very hard, pressing his lips against her and

letting his saliva flow into her mouth. He presses his whole body

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against hers with great vehemence, gratifying his sexual desire in this

process.

In this physical union, her husband is successful as he is able

to penetrate every part of her body and make his bodily fluids mingle

with hers. But he never realizes that she is still emotionally

unsatisfied and hungry. In the emotional and spiritual sense he

completely fails.

Feminism has been a noticeable influence in the writings of

Kamala das which is hard to miss the eyes of a regular reader. But

she never claimed herself to be a feminist. When she reads her

works, he can easily notice the indelible stamps of feminism in her

writings.

Kamala das through her works advocates for the equal rights

and leadership for women. She invokes the image of a woman who

despite suffering all oddities in the hands of men, does not part with

feminine self. Her liberated spirit finds herself suffocated and cries out

in anguish. Her feet feel fettered with the restrictions imposed upon

her by her husband as well as the society. She revolts against the

social norms which deny her the right to be herself. She despises the

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society which experts her to take up different roles without any

complaint. She is against at the way she is expected to behave like a

doll and please her master. Kamala Das exposes her inner pain in her

poems.

She also openly protests against the male domination in a man-

women relationship. She feels that in an interaction with a woman,

what a man cares about the most is his ego. He does not leave

enough room for a woman to express her inner feelings and emotion.

She challenges this male domination in “The Old Playhouse and Other

poems”

Kamala das, through her writings attempts to break this age old

tradition of silent sufferings. The female characters delineated by her

in her works are strong and courageous and they boldly take up and

gets against the male superiority and his falsely in flatted ego and

refuse to bow down to the system. She also draws our attention to

those outworn ideas and social norms which kinder our emotional and

intellectual growth. They also act as great obstacles in the cordial and

equitable man-women relationship.

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 Kamala das feels as if after marriage, she has turned in to a

non entity. Her husband boasts of his manly power by apprising her

of his adventures with his maid servants. He is indifferent about

Kamala Das’s emotions and feelings and comes back to her again and

again for fulfillment of his intense desire. Kamala Das feels herself

devoid of any identity. She writes in “The Old Playhouse and other

poems”

“You turn me into a bird of stone, a granite

Dove, you build around me a shabby drawing room

And stroke my pitted face absent mindedly while

You read. With loud talk you bruise my pre-morning sleep

You stick a finger into my dreaming eye”

The plight of a married woman, claimed to her husbands house

is depicted in the opening line of the poem “The Old Play house”.

“you planned to tame a Swallow

…pathways of the sky………”

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Thus Kamala Das is exclusively concerned with the personal

experience of love.

To bring out the deep feminine nature with the writing of

kamala das, I wish to narrate some lines about her work “ Summer in

Calcutta”. It illustrate an ecstatic mode of “ feminine” writing in its

depiction of the effects of the April sun at the poets body. The caress

of the sun generates a trance in the poet who discovers zones of

hidden pleasure lying within her very body which have been rendered

imperceptible by the legacy of patriarchy. The memory of her lover is

momentarily erases from her mind at the instance she realizes out the

“juice” of the sun. The poem advocates “feminine” effect in writing

and strives to rise beyond the hierarchical gender norms.

Das’s poems ‘summer in Calcutta’ is a passionate poem

revolving around the private space of the poet in moments of living

with herself. It presents some exquisite images while describing her

delight at the warmth of the April sun. The defamilarized presentations

of the sun and sun rays adds special charm to the form. The poet

imagines the sun to be an orange which is squeezed in her glass to

prepare a delicious juice which sips in lazy contentment.

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 “What is this drink But

The April sun, squeezed

Like an orange in

My glass ? I sep the

Fire, I drink and drink

Again, I am drunk

Yes, but on the gold

Of suns ”

The poet gets intoxicated as the “noble venom” flows through

her views. She talks about the reaction her body makes with the

touch of the April sun. As the sun rays play at her body she enjoys

the mild cuddle of the sun which reduces her worries. It is essentially

a female experience - the suppressed desire of the poet leaps forth at

the caress of the vigorous sun. In illustrating the passionate account

of the poets delight, the poem becomes a specimen of jealous mode of

”feminine “ writing.

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 A major characteristics of feminism is that women’s libidinal

desire is oppressed and repressed by patriarchy. The suppressed desire

in linguistic terms is a difficult endeavor because language itself is a

patriarchal construct. The subversive strategy that Kamala das adopts in

her poems is manifested in the disruptive jerks her short broken lines

produce. The linguistic conflict brings out in analogy the mixed

feelings of pleasure and pain working simultaneously in the poet. The

next phrase, “brides narrows smile” which insinuates at the grim

prospect of an Indian women who is more nervous than happy at the

eve of her first night with her husband, completes the circle of

traumatized desire previously evoked. The eruption of desire takes form

of insubstantial “bubbles” which however, ‘meet’ her lips.

“We bubbles ring

My glass, like a brides

Nervous smile, and meet

My lips”

The deeply passionate description of the poets gustatory and

tactile sensations in the poem envisages a possible release of libidinal

voices that the patriarchal machinery diminishes to the

poet is lulled to forget fullness. The memory of her lover gets blurred

from her mind.

“How

Brief the term of my

Devotion, how brief

Your reign when I with

Glass in hand, drink, drink

And drink, again this

Juice of April Suns”

The liberated poet in Summer in Calcutta listens to the

previously on heart song of her female body. It is the poets

engagement with the April Sun that helps her find out the way to the

previously unknown realm of pleasure. She can new boldly defy male

participation at the moment of discovering the zones of pleasure

which reside within her very body. She enjoys it through every pores

of her female body. It opens countless ways for her to discover

region of delight.
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